I'm looking for a way to buy stuff from amazon (like toilet paper, eggs, etc) goods I use on a weekly basis automatically via one of their APIs.
I'm aware that http://zinc.io/ is able to do this, but being a third party enterprise solution, I'm thinking there is a hefty price tag involved and am searching for possible alternative solutions.
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I recently learned, traditionally, interbank payment systems need following features to carry out tasks:
need a central bank to prevent parties involved from going bust.
need a clearing house to perform netting algorithms to minimise liquidity requirement.
If we use corda to implement a similar payment system:
do we still need central banks and clearing houses appearing in the networks as independent nodes?
If so, what do they do?
Do they serve as notary nodes or something else?
What relationships do they have with commercial banks?
Why this kind of corda-based design is better than traditional interbank payment system?
Corda has been used to develop a real-time gross settlement pilot in association with the Monetary Authority of Singapore. See the report here: http://www.mas.gov.sg/~/media/ProjectUbin/Project%20Ubin%20Phase%202%20Reimagining%20RTGS.pdf and the source code here: https://github.com/project-ubin/ubin-corda.
Using Corda removes the need for clearing houses. Netting and delivery-versus-payment/atomic asset swaps can be achieved without the need for a centralised party. Corda also removes the need for reconciliation, which happens automatically via the platform.
More importantly, Corda is driving towards a vision of global interoperability. See
https://medium.com/corda/universal-interoperability-why-enterprise-blockchain-applications-should-be-deployed-to-shared-3d4daff97754. In this vision, assets are not trapped in silos, and can move freely across the network. For example:
BankNode receives cash via the interbank payment system
BankNode lends this money to SupplierNode in exchange for an obligation
SupplierNode uses this money to purchase goods from FactoryNode
FactoryNode uses the money to pay the suppliers of its raw materials
And so on, and so on...
Coordinating things using a clearing house remains possible when looking at a single area like interbank payments. However, as the network grows to support many different business use-cases - supply chain, lending, assets, payments... - it becomes increasingly difficult to find a coordinating party that can be trusted by all parties, across industries and regions. Corda removes the need to identify such a coordinating party.
In this vision, central banks are likely to continue to exist as trusted issuers of fiat currency.
I have access to Amazon Product API.
It shows Amazon Price (and shipping is usually free),
But it also shows the Lowest Price from Other Amazon Sellers who sell the product.
Usually these sellers also charge high shipping rate, and thus, in order to create a correct comparison tool, I need a way to extract that shipping rate.
I read that from the APAPI it is impossible, but I'm sure there's some elegant way to do this (As I'm pretty sure I've stumbled upon sites that do this)
I'm not a seller so I don't think I can gain access to the Marketplace API.
I have deployed atmospheric modeling instances in Amazon EC2. I can launch via command line interface, and this sets up a server that I can then query and control via REST-like methods. It's great for free use but I want to find a way to charge for its use to cover costs plus a little profit. For the life of me I don't know where to start, and I've searched in all the wrong places.
The scenario I have in mind is to have users register and pay for the time and resources they have used (which could be hours, even days or weeks, plus disc and transfer). I don't want to have to deal with the payments and registrations if I don't have to.
I guess Amazon has some means to facilitate it, but it requires approval and such (not necessarily a bad thing). I have thought of Shopify, but I'm not sure I see a path. I can do crude stuff with Django, but again I don't really understand the path I would take. Likewise with Joomla ecommerce.
Is it typical that people would generally roll their own for this kind of thing, or is there an existing framework out there that might help? Most importantly, are there books or links that help someone at least get a grounding to start on a path? I find nothing in my long searches.
I suspect this may be off topic, but I don't know where else to ask. It's all about programming "something" and surely must be relevant to a community out there.
I've been tasked with setting up a society's website. I'm a full time Django (at al) web developer so I was happy to take on the task.
Going through the specs, they want to control memberships so that all applications need a "second" (read: sponsor, referee, etc) and then they need to pay a subscription fee to be part of the club.
This club has a number of events with variable ticket prices for lunches and talks to name two. Only members are allowed to see the price per ticket and therefore only members are allowed to buy the tickets.
I had originally planned on farming the event management off to EventBrite and pulling the upcoming events back to the website through EB's API but this members-only constraint looks like something EventBrite can't do.
Then there's processing members subscriptions. I had hoped to allow anybody to register a django.contrib.auth account but leave subscription payment offline but the client would be happier if they could mark accounts as "members", store the subscription data in the database and let the members pay online.
Like with EventBrite, I was hoping I could store rough membership data (whether or not they're allowed to subscribe, a unique token for the user on the API service, their level of membership and their membership's expiry) and there'd be something I could post users off to to process their subscription payment.
I basically don't want to touch any payment systems. Even something as simple as Paypal+IPN is something I'd rather not do (I can and have in the past on other projects) but it's the layer of management that I'd have to build around it (messaging members, creating recurring events, etc) that I'd like to farm out to a third party... Even if they do want an additional percent of the payments processed.
Do any of you know any suitable APIs that cover membership or events or both?
Or is this so complex that I should give up hoping for external help and just knuckle down and do it myself?
I think the google search you are looking for is online membership management. I don't know if any of them play particularly nicely with Django/python, but some of them do include APIs. Almost all of these are companies that charge, either for the system, or on a per-user basis.
If you don't mind installing something yourself, CiviCRM is a free, open source solution that I found with a bit of googling. It's integrates with either Joomla or Drupal (so probably PHP-based). You'd have to put the payment processing in yourself, but it does support payments using PayPal which would take handling payments mostly out of the equation. If you can, choose PayPal Express rather than PayPal Website Payments Pro since you may need to be PCI-DSS compliant to use the latter.
Currently using SAS as measurement engine and Business Objects as display layer. Looking to develop a new, faster, slicker solution. Has anyone developed or purchased a campaign measurement reporting system? This solution should measure everything from email stats, web stats, customer activity, lift, ROI, etc.
Ok.. I'm researching and finding nada... We are working with a team from India and they want to re-write everything from scratch.. Any solutions out there at all?
If you are already using SAS, have you looked at their Marketing Automation software?
Update:
Just saw a press release from SAS about a new "Software as a Service" Campaign Management solution. Might be worth checking out for this.
When I was a consultant, we either rolled our own or used SAS (or a combination of the two).
Another vote for roll your own, it's mad that this area is so under served. The expense of building your own solution from the ground up, and the hassle of managing a remote team makes me think you may get further by integrating some existing tools.
Google Analytics for web usage has an API, there are many web log tools, you then need to bolt in the customer figures from your end of things.
I really doubt you could do much better than SAS in this area. Especially if you pick up some of thier specialist packages.
You could have a look at R which is a pretty slick open source statistics package. Unfortunately its not used very much for marketing; most of the examples and freely available code is geared towards biochemistry, genetics etc.